


Between two Lungs

by Basilintime



Category: Pacific Rim
Genre: AAU?, AU to my AU, Chuck Lives, short little ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 22:07:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1874232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basilintime/pseuds/Basilintime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck lives and despite some missing pieces he and Newton manage to carve out a little life for themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between two Lungs

**Author's Note:**

> An Anon on Tumblr asked if I could do a happy Newton/Chuck ending. So, this is sort of an alternate ending for Scream if Newton wasn't in love with Hermann and Chuck had lived past the cancelling of the apocalypse. 
> 
> It's just kind of a short nice little fluff piece cause I could use some fluff. 
> 
> I'm not including this in the Impression upon Space series since it's sort of an AU to that. 
> 
> Title from "Between two Lungs" by Florence and the Machine.

                Neither of them had taken to the fanfare as much as people had expected once the Breach had closed. It had been hard to say who had it worse; Newton with his suddenly skittish nature where crowds just felt too close and questions too intrusive or Chuck who still had his temper but now it was compounded by that overwhelming sense of ‘what now?’.

                It had been a couple of days before they found Chuck, the distress signal in the Evac pod had been damaged by the explosion. Still, they had managed to find him and pull him in to the Shatterdome. It had sent a flurry throughout the world as people talked about the hero pilot and it had caused emotional turmoil for those closest to him. Chuck had been unconscious for a few days, and there were three constants in his life during that time. They’d been Herc, Max and Newton who had all hovered near him waiting for some sign that he would be alright.

                When the media frenzy had hit Herc has done his best to shield them all from it. Mako and Raleigh had their own share of problems to deal with that weren’t limited to nightmare about the breach, and so they had all been a collective mess on the press tour. They’d struggled through simply by relying on each other, relying on Herc and Tendo to clean up any slips during interviews or confusion when someone simply got up and left in the middle of a live broadcast. After a few months it had started to calm down though that hadn’t been much better. What were you supposed to do when you’ve saved the world and removed the need for your own profession?

                They had tried returning to Sydney once the dust had settled and the world started to move on, but it hadn’t worked. Chuck was the one who ended up overwhelmed this time and though he hid it better than Newton hid his anxiety it had slowly built until on evening Newton had come home to find him sitting in the dark of their shared condo. It was too much of the old life, too many things that made it too easy for him to forget for even just a moment that the world wasn’t ending anymore.

                What happened when you took someone who’d spent their whole life fighting and told them there was no reason to fight anymore? For Chuck it left him a bit hollow and at times his anger would flare in a brilliant burst and if Newton or Herc weren’t around to calm him he landed himself in trouble. On top of it all there were the people, too many people who recognized them and expected the people they’d seen on television; too many people who didn’t understand the damage that was done on a personal level for them all.

                In the end it had been Raleigh who had made the suggestion after Chuck had a public blow out with a man who hadn’t known when to stop pushing for just one more photograph. The Alaska Shatterdome had been reopened as central base of operations. It was the best location for it as it’d served that purpose for years before it’d been closed, and between it and the Hong Kong Shatterdome they could cover most of the Pacific.

                It would give Newton access to labs since he was continuing the research on the Kaiju while Hermann worked on calculating the potential of the breach reopening. Herc could stay close by making the move himself; something he insisted was more for practical reasons though the truth was he wanted to be near his son. That had been the reason behind going to the somewhat defunct Sydney Shatterdome in the first place when it would have made more sense for the Marshall to be up in Alaska or Hong Kong with the other teams. And so they’d moved up into the relatively remote area of Alaska, one that was close enough for Newton to go in to work at the labs but isolated enough that they could escape into the quiet.

                Chuck floundered for a while, not able to justify working for the PPDC when there were limited positions open for ex-Jaeger pilots. He moved between small jobs for a bit until something finally stuck. He was now head of a crew that was working on the dismantling of the wall, something he took great delight in mention to Raleigh when they visited.

                “I’m undoing all that shit work you did during your five year hiatus, Rales,” Chuck drawled the first time Mako and Raleigh had come up to see them all. They had started to get along after the breach had closed, Raleigh could perhaps understand best that feeling inside Chuck’s head of having someone linked to you and then suddenly blink out of existence. Stacker had activated Chuck’s Evac-pod in those last moments before the explosion, and it hadn’t been enough time for them to be completely disconnected in the drift.

                “Well that explains what’s taking so long for the wall to come down if they have you trying to undo the work I did,” Raleigh had said dismissively and Chuck had shoved him out of his chair. They weren’t perfect but Newton knew that Chuck enjoyed it when the other two pilots came to visit. Him and Raleigh would sit out and talk for long hours each time, sometimes with Mako sitting with them and other times she’d be inside with Newton.

                By the time a year had passed they’d settled into a pleasant life there. They were bothered from time to time with somebody trying to dig up story on those few who had saved the world. With the anniversary of the Breach closing having just passed they’d had a few of those types come through, but Herc had sent them packing in a polite but stern fashion. Newton got home before Chuck most evenings now as working on the wall meant long hours and hard days. Once the structure was taken down he wasn’t sure what Chuck’s plans were, but he’d shown some interest in getting on as a roughneck.

                Newton did worry some evenings when the shadows grew long and Chuck wasn’t home yet, but it was nothing like it had been back when he’d hide in the lab after hearing that Striker Eureka had caught the drop. Work on the wall and even working on oil rigs was nothing compared to waiting to hear about how a battle with a trans-dimensional monster turned out.

                He was watching the sun dip low behind the trees now from the kitchen as he waited for the sound of Chuck’s truck pulling in. Newton still got a little lost himself sometimes, thoughts wandering away from him as he grew focused on one fixed point. He’d talked to Hermann about it and wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or not to hear the man had experienced it too. When the breach had closed it had left a metaphorical black hole in his mind. It wasn’t as though the memories from the Kaiju had disappeared, but it was still different. With Hermann he could still feel the man there, perhaps not going as far as reading his mind, but feeling his presence like Hermann was standing in the room with him.

                If they focused even with the distance they could still get a whisper of how the other was feeling, something Newton had been experimenting with silently until Hermann had called him up one day and chewed him out for it in that way only Hermann could. With the Kaiju it was different though, most the time they simply just weren’t there or were distant memories. Everyone now and then it felt different, every now and then it was like the tug of an ocean current. Something underneath the surface that you couldn’t necessarily see but felt, that unease of feeling like something was just out of sight beyond the trees.

                “You’re doing it again, mate.” Newton startled when Chuck spoke quietly into his ear, the man quickly catching the glass Newton had been holding before it could fall to the floor though he didn’t quite manage to keep the water inside it from spilling out over everything.

                “Shit, sorry,” Newton mumbled, moving to grab the towel to try and dry up. He was lucky he’d already turned the burner under the skillet that held their stir fry for dinner off or it’d likely be smoking by now. Chuck set the glass down on the counter before he pulled Newton into a hug, effectively stopping his efforts to clean up. “Sorry, it kind of sneaks up on me sometimes.” Newton wrapped his arms around Chuck in return, burying his face against the man’s chest despite him still being in his work clothes.

                “Not getting worse, is it?” He felt Chuck press a kiss to the top of his head, a note of concern in the man’s voice.

                “I’m not tempted to go wander off into the ocean in search of something that’s not there if that’s what you’re asking.” Newton pulled back so he could start trying to get the water off the floor before one of them slipped and Chuck watched him skeptically. “How was your day?” Newton hoped to change the subject but Chuck was rarely that easy to sway off course when he felt like something was up.

                “Fine, we’ll have that south section down in another couple of weeks. You didn’t really answer my question there, love.” Newton huffed lightly and just sat down where he was, giving up on mopping the water. Chuck lowered himself down to sit next to him, back against the cabinet doors as he sat and waited. Newton never had managed to learn how to defend against Chuck and his silences, and it didn’t help that they felt almost deeper now when they shared so much anymore.

                “It’s the same. It’s not getting worse it just…it feels like I’m somewhere else for a moment. Or that I’m in two places or something,” Newton said, leaning against Chuck’s shoulder and the man slipped his arm comfortably around him out of habit.

                “Nothing new though…from them?”

                “No, not from them. It’s usually just Hermann in the distance, usually trying to let me know how pissed off I’ve just made him with some email or comment.” Chuck laughed, a soft breathy sound next to Newton’s ear that made a small shiver go down his back.

                “You’d let me know, right? We agreed no hiding,” Chuck said, tone light despite how serious he was. They’d done their fair share of hiding things from each other and they’d agreed to be done with it. Newton intended to keep this secret, remembering how angry and hurt Chuck had been that last time he’d kept something hidden. Never again.

                “No hiding.”

                “Good, now…put dinner in the fridge. We’ll reheat it. We both need to go have a shower now that you’ve doused us in God knows what,” Chuck said with a light grin, leaning to kiss Newton’s temple before pulling himself up to his feet and offering the biologist his hand to help get him standing again as well.

                “It was water.” Newton said, narrowing his eyes at Chuck for the sarcasm.

                “Can’t be too careful,” Chuck said with mock sternness though he couldn’t hide the grin. He didn’t wait for Newton to respond before turning to walk out of the kitchen, stripping his shirt off as he went. Newton suddenly decided dinner really could wait as he carefully grabbed the skillet to push it in amongst the crowded fridge the best he could. Chuck already had the water running by the time he made it to the bathroom, doing his best to strip out of his clothes along the way. Between his shoulder blades was his newest tattoo, the last one he’d gone in to get after the media blitz had passed.

                It perhaps wasn’t the Jaeger that Chuck had once asked him to get but that hadn’t mattered after Newton had explained the intricate circles and patterns to him. Chuck trailed a finger down along the pattern now as Newton stepped into the stream of water with his back to the other man.

                 It’d taken a bit of work to make sure it was correct, and he’d had Hermann go over it numerous times to make sure that it was right before he’d committed to getting it. In cool blue hues the circular Gallifreyan spelled out a question and answer, lines like circuitry reaching out to infect the warm colored waves of the Kaijus. Chuck asked that question now, words barely audible over the spray of the shower head as his chest pressed against Newton’s back and hands wandered down along the shorter man’s sides.

                “Where are we?”

                “We’re home,” Newton answered with a small smile.


End file.
